The present invention concerns improvements in the processing, production and product quality of a dry flaked or intact, reconstitutable leguminous product. More particularly, the invention relates to a continuous process for producing a dry flaked, instantly reconstitutable Mexican refried bean product. The invention is an advance in the technology for the preparation of a rehydratable bean product because the method eliminates the steps of soaking and pre-cooking the beans, reduces the cooking time, and consistently results in a dried product that is truly reconstitutable to a product with the desired characteristics of Mexican style refried beans.
Refried beans are a popular side-dish used in Mexican style cooking. Mexican style foods have become one of the fastest growing segments in the American food market, both for home use and in institutions such as restaurants. Usually the product is prepared from scratch in a process that involves several steps in the kitchen. These steps include soaking the beans for several hours, cooking the beans in a kettle for several more hours, and mashing the cooked beans. The cook usually prepares a large batch which is then refrigerated and refried by heating a portion of the batch to serve at each meal. Since this process is time consuming, expensive and labor intensive, canned refried beans have become popular for home use. However, canned beans are expensive and inefficient to use in the preparation of refried beans for institutional and restaurant use where large quantities of a product with consistent characteristics is desired.
Restaurant-sized cans of beans are heavy, expensive to ship, require large storage areas, and are inconvenient to use in the preparation of large quantities of refried beans. Restaurant cooks must open many cans to prepare large servings. Cooks must be skilled in the cooking of refried beans so that a consistent, high quality product is offered to customers. Disposal of the resulting empty cans is also a problem for the restaurant. Therefore, dehydrated beans packed in bags are preferred for restaurant and institutional feeding. Not only is shipping and storage easier and less expensive, but also the preparation is simpler, usually just involving adding hot water and serving. In addition, the cost per serving for dehydrated refried beans is less than that of canned refried beans. These factors have led to a growing demand for dehydrated refried bean products for institutional and restaurant food preparation.
The prior art in the commercial preparation of dehydrated bean products has provided numerous methods to form dried whole beans, bean flakes, and bean powders which are reconstitutable. In general, these prior art methods consist of combinations of the following steps; soaking, blanching, parboiling, physical manipulations prior to cooking, cooking under pressure or at atmospheric pressure, post-cooking manipulations, and various methods of drying the cooked product. If the desired final product is dehydrated, cooked whole beans, the prior art discloses that beans are soaked or blanched without pre-cooking physical manipulation. The prior art discloses reconstitution of dried flaked and/or powder product as occurring with hot water in a few minutes. Reconstitution of dehydrated, cooked whole beans occurs in approximately fifteen minutes. Both batch and continuous processes are disclosed in the prior art for making dried leguminous products.
Problems encountered by the prior art methods include large production areas to soak and cook the beans, long time periods necessary for soaking and cooking the beans, lack of adequate controls over the cooking process leading to over or under cooking and batch to batch variability, and a product that does not closely resemble the conventionally prepared product In addition, the reconstitution of the dried product often takes longer than a few minutes, even when hot water is used. Moreover, powders produced by these methods tend to produce a lumpy product after rehydration.
As such, there is a continuing need in the art to provide a dried, leguminous product in large quantities, in a rapid fashion, with reduced production costs in a form that is easy to ship, store, and prepare. There is also a continuing need to make a product that has consistent properties, when rehydrated can have a variety of textures, which instantly rehydrates with either hot or cold water, and when rehydrated has the texture, taste, color, and appearance of legumes prepared in a conventional manner.